E 



\ 



r^v , 



Buchanan's Administration 



ON THE 



Eve of the Rebellion 

A Paper Read 

before 

The Cliosophic Society 

Lancaster, Pa., January 24, 1 908 

by 

W. U. Hensel 



It is Easy to be Wise After the Event.' 



LANCASTER, PA. 
MCMVIII 



Buchanan's Administration 



ON THE 



Eve of the Rebellion 

A Paper Read 

before 

The Cliosophic Society 

Lancaster, Pa., January 24, 1908 

by 

W. U. Hensel 



It is Easy to be Wise After the Event. 



LANCASTER, PA. 
MCMVIII 






Hits. 



" GIFT 



Buchanan's Adminstration on the 
Eve of the Rebellion. 



Mr. Chairman, Members of the Cliosophic Society and 
Guests : 

We have so far progressed with the development and dis- 
cussion of the topic for the present Cho season as to easily 
recognize and fuUy appreciate its comprehensive character. 
A half century of history, during a period so pregnant with 
great events, testing the very unity of our nation and the 
endurance of its institutions, under changes of the most 
revolutionary character, has been made the subject of 
many thousands of volumes of historical narration and 
philosophic discussion. In contemplating even the outside 
of them, one is at some loss to determine whether the tele- 
scopic or the microscopic system of investigation is the 
more satisfactory treatment for the purposes of this So- 
ciety's entertainment — not to say its instruction — whether 
the spectacular contemplation of the panorama or the 
perhaps more tedious study of the miniature is nearer to 
your tastes and more conformable to your temper. 

Howbeit no considerable figure in the period of political 
stress and storm which marked the agitation of the slavery 
issue and collateral questions can be fairly treated, as to 
the events of his life, the relation to his times and contem- 
poraries, his place in the final judgment of history and in 
the last analysis of patriotic character and motive, within 
the limits of a sixty-minute paper. 

For myself, I incline, from the observation and experience 
of many years, to the opinion that the range of our studies 
should be narrowed and focussed, and the subject of a single 



4 BUCHANAN S ADMINISTRATION 

winter could be better comprehended and more satisfac- 
torily handled within a short space of time; that they 
should center in the life and influence of some single con- 
spicuous historical personage, the works, if not the work of 
a great creative genius, or revolve about one epoch in the 
life of our own or the history of some other nation. 

For many reasons I shall confine my treatment of Mr. 
Buchanan's public career and his attitude toward public 
questions to that closing period of his administration and 
of his official life which intervened the election and inaugu- 
ration of his successor; only contrasting his executive aims 
and acts with those of Mr. Lincoln at the outset of the 
latter's term, when the conditions were most nearly cor- 
responding. 

I shall assume that the main events of his life are familiar 
to any Lancaster audience — his pre-eminent ability as a 
lawyer, his long experience and signal services in the many 
places of public trust he held; his unsullied private char- 
acter and unquestioned personal integrity; his almost con- 
tinuous discharge of high official duties through the many 
years in which he rose from the rank of State legislator, 
through service as representative, diplomat, senator, secre- 
tary of state and ambassador, to the highest office under 
our government — advancing to the place by those grada- 
tions of experience, once familiar and common, but known 
no longer in our political system; since now — for better or 
for worse — canned statesmanship, like condensed food and 
preserved music, arc furnished to order, on short notice 
and ready for immediate use — accepted generally for the 
gaudiness of the label rather than on the merits of the 
contents. 

Herbert Spencer, in "Man versus The State," observes 
that "unquestiona))ly among monstrous beliefs one of the 
most monstrous is that while for a simple handicraft such 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 5 

as shoemaking a long apprenticeship is needful, the sole 
thing which needs no apprenticeship is making a nation's 
laws." Mr. Buchanan was not made president by reason 
of any such popular or party delusion. In reaching that 
place he only came to his own. 

Moreover, had he realized his sincere belief that the 
notable decision of the Supreme Court upon the slavery 
question, which was almost contemporaneous with his 
inauguration, would have been accepted by people and 
politicians as the decisive judgment of the supreme federal 
tribunal, upon the question of then greatest federal and 
popular concern, it may easily be conceived his administra- 
tion and himself would have gone down to history as iden- 
tified v.'ith one of the most notable executive terms since 
the beginning of the government. Mr. Bryce, the most 
far-sighted and fair-minded foreign critic of our institutions, 
and Mr. Rhodes, probably the most accurate historian of 
the period he treats, agree that our material progress during 
1850-60 was greater than that of any preceding decade; 
and the American gives many illustrations of the tremen- 
dous advances in the intellectual, social and moral state of 
the people of that time. 

Again, had success attended the earnest efforts of those 
who so strenuously sought to avert war in 1861; had the 
vigorously pressed Crittenden measures of compromise 
been adopted and accepted ; or had Virginia's effort to save 
the Union — accepted by twenty-one states who composed 
the Peace Congress, presided over by one who had been 
President of the Republic — had this or any like movement 
prevailed, the Buchanan administration would have been 
signalized as marking at once the most awful crisis and the 
safest deliverance in all our internal history; and the sunset 
of his political life would have been irradiated with the 
"gold and glory of a perfect day." 



6 Buchanan's administration 

THE VERDICT OF HISTORY. 

As it happened, I only record what is the overwhelming 
and apparently fixed conclusion of by far the greater num- 
ber of the historic writers of this period, that his adminis- 
tration was inglorious and feeble, that it failed where it 
ought to have succeeded, and that this was largely due to 
the weakness of the executive head, if not to his actual 
lack of patriotism. 

I believe it is the sincere belief of a great majority of 
even the intelligent people of this country who have hon- 
estly tried to study its history, that Mr. Buchanan, as 
president, at the outbreak of the secession movement, 
was a weak, timid, old man; who had gained his place by 
the favor of, if not through the bargain with, an arrogant, 
unscrupulous, slaveholding oligarchy of the South; that he 
was an accessory after, if not before, the fact, to the plot 
of a partisan majority of the Supreme Court to withhold 
the Dred Scott decision until after his election and then 
make it cover a point not vital to it, for unscrupulous 
political purposes; that he was the tool of crafty Southern 
leaders, who used him and his cabinet to bring to successful 
issue long predetermined plans to break up the Union; 
that in the development of these, he permitted, if he did 
not connive at, the weakening, scattering and disintegrat- 
ing of the armed forces of federal power on land and sea, 
the distribution throughout the Southern States of great 
and disproportionate quantities of muskets, rifles and 
cannon, so that the impending Confederacy might have a 
long start on the Union forces in physical preparation for 
armed conflict; that he obstructed Congress in its eff"orts 
to avert rebellion and war, or to properly, promptly and 
effectively meet it when declared ; that he drooped the col- 
ors of presidential dignity when he treated the envoys of 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 7 

defiant rebellion with a consideration due only to foreign 
ambassadors; that he parleyed over the re-inforcement of 
federal forces in government forts until the Confederates 
could rally enough troops to capture them; that he repu- 
diated the right to assert some existing constitutional ex- 
ecutive power to levy war against a rebellious state govern- 
ment or the people of a rebellious conmion wealth ; and that 
when he quit the office, March 4, 1861, he was succeeded by 
a firm, resolute, patriotic successor, v/hose policies, methods 
and executive acts, in striking contrast with, and immediate 
reversal of, Mr. Buchanan's, asserted the proper presidential 
prerogative, antagonized rebels, roused patriotism, re- 
inforced forts, inspired Congress, raised armies, established 
national credit, waged war; and, with a combination of 
Jefferson's statesmanship, Jackson's courage, Washington's 
patriotism, Hamilton's skill and Webster's enthusiasm, 
after four years of civil war, the expenditure of ten billions 
of treasm-e and the loss of a half million human lives, ac- 
complished what Mr. Buchanan could have done bloodlessly 
and economically had he not been a dotard or a traitor! 

I cannot reasonably quarrel with the young student who, 
ofT-hand, accepts these conclusions; nor with a younger 
generation, who find it more convenient — even though 
more unjust — to adopt than to dispute or dislodge them. 

Although nowadays we pay only one or two cents for a 
morning or evening newspaper, we are unreasonable enough 
to expect that what is printed therein, so far as it purports 
to be news and a narration of facts, has been gathered at 
the expense of its readers and patrons, with some regard 
for truth and accuracy. None of us has the time or the 
money to verify the same. Nevertheless, as we so often 
find that what is published regarding the things of which 
we have some knowledge is grossly inaccurate, unreliable 
and untruthful, we would also find, had we the means to 



8 Buchanan's administration 

test it, a vast deal of what passes for " a brief abstract and 
chronicle of the time" to be merely the "baseless fabric 
of a vision." So if the touchstone of historical truth be 
applied to much that the history makers have set down 
as established fact or invincible opinion, it will be found 
to be unsupported by testimony and unsustainable by fair 
argument. 

MR. BUCHANAN'S CRITICS. 

Thus in the elaborate and voluminous Albert Bushnell 
Hart scries, "The American Nation," Prof. Smith, in the 
volume on "Parties and Slavery," dismisses Buchanan with 
the curt criticism: "No president has a record of more 
hopeless ill success." Chadwick, in his "Causes of the Civil 
War," in the same series, speaks of him as a weak "old 
man," surrounded by traitorous counsellors and afraid to 
do the duty which was plain before him. 

Schouler, in his five-volume history of the United States 
of America, "Under the Constitution," which period he 
seems to think begins with the Revolution and ends with 
the Civil War, complains that in 1860-1 the country lacked 
an executive who made "a bold and manly stand," "a free 
avowal that the Union must be preserved and the laws of 
the land obeyed." This he blithely declares "would have 
relieved the gloom and despondency which was already 
gathering in business circles," etc.; and he dismisses the 
subject by re-echoing what he calls "the spontaneous cry 
of conscience Democrats": "Oh! for an hour of Jackson." 
In the language of the street, however, he "gives himself 
away" by confessing that the weak point in our system is 
that which kept the government's resources sequestered for 
four months "after the people had declared their will, in 
control of an administration and Congress defeated at the 
polls." As a historian, he makes nothing by trying to 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 9 

shift the blame for the forwardness of the Confederate 
cause from Buchanan to Congress; for he should have known, 
if he is a true historian, that the Congress which met one 
month after Lincoln's election was a Republican Congress, 
organized and controlled by the political opposition to 
Mr. Buchanan, and from December 3, 1860, when it met, 
until March 4, 1861, when it expired, it never passed an act 
nor did a deed in support of Buchanan's efforts to avert 
war or to suppress the incipient rebellion. And though the 
next Congress, elected in 1860, and overwhelmingly Re- 
publican, could have been called into extra session March 
5, 1861, no effort was made by the incoming Republican 
administration to assemble it until July 4, 1861 — nearly 
three months after the flag had been fired upon. 

Mr. Rhodes, who makes a resolute and in the main as 
successful an effort to be fair as anyone with his strong 
bias can be, clings to the view that Buchanan was "lame 
and apologetic" and by his executive headship so far domi- 
nated Dix, Black, Stanton and Holt, of his Cabinet, as to 
prevent a policy of "vigorous defense prompted by strong 
patriotic and national sentiments." John A. Logan, who 
of course is entitled to no rank as a historian or political 
philosopher, but whose opinion is significant because (Saul- 
of-Tarsus-like) he was converted over night from a pro- 
slavery Democrat to a red-mouthed Republican, and was 
seriously considered — by himself at least — as a presidential 
possibility, speaks of the Buchanan outfit, in his "Great 
Conspiracy," as "an imbecile administration, which stood 
with dejected mien and folded hands helplessly awaiting 
the coming catastrophe." Gen. Benj. F. Butler, who had 
voted fifty-seven times for Jefferson Davis as the fit Demo- 
cratic nominee for president of the United States, has re- 
called in "his book" how the question of secession could 
have been settled and "life and treasure incalculable" saved 



V 



10 Buchanan's administration 

had Buchanan accepted his advice and arrested the Seces- 
sion Commissioners for treason. As Mr. Buchanan's suc- 
cessor had the benefit of Gen. Butler's services, civil and 
military, and as all political parties had his help at one 
time, and his opposition at another, it probably may not 
be quite fair to quote him as authority on any side of any 
question. 

Mr. Blaine, who possesses some of the consistent qualities 
of a genuine historical critic, even of politics, considers that 
Mr. Buchanan lacked will, fortitude and moral courage; 
and professes to believe that if he had possessed " the un- 
conquerable will of Jackson or the stubborn courage 
of Taylor he could have changed the history of the 
revolt against the Union." John Sherman recalls in his 
"Recollections" with manifest self-satisfaction that he 
wrote, in December, 1860, "Treason sits in the councils 
and timidity controls the executive power;" and, comment- 
ing in 1895, on Mr. Buchanan's attitude, he characterizes 
it as "feebleness, vacillation and dishonor." Schurz de- 
nounces him as "the most miserable presidential figure in 
American history." Mr. Elson, whose work is probably 
the best of all the single-volume histories, calls him "a 
weak and vacillating president." 

Noah Brooks, in his life of Lincoln, stigmatizes his prede- 
cessor as cowardly, senile and vacillating, because he did 
not stamp out secession antl reinforce Fort Sumter. John 
T. Morse, who has carefully excluded Buchanan from his 
"American Statesman Series," though it comprises many 
men of much inferior rank, arraigns him bitterly in the 
life of Lincoln, which he himself wrote ; and yet page after 
page of it discredits his own estimate. 

I could multiply these citations almost without limit. 
Let it suffice to recall that Horace Greely, the very rankest 
of disunionists, in his "Recollections," finds it impossible 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 11 

to reconcile Mr. Buchanan's conduct at the initial stages of 
the rebellion with any other hypothesis than that of " secret 
pledges made by him, or for him, to the Southern leaders, 
when he was an aspirant to the presidency, that fettered 
and paralyzed him when they perverted the power enjoyed 
by them, as members of his cabinet, to the disruption and 
overthrow of the Union." 

AN UNJUST JUDGMENT. 

I recall these opinions and I cite this very general judg- 
ment of contemporary history for the purpose of demon- 
strating that they are unhistorical, unjudicial, untrue, un- 
just and cruel. The subject affords fresh illustration of 
how easily Error and Falsehood can outrun Justice and 
Truth in a short race. A very brief examination into the 
facts of the case will, on the other hand, demonstrate how 
simple it is for those who earnestly desire and honestly 
strive to get at the truth to ascertain and grasp it. 

From the same authorities whose opinions I have quoted 
I reach and undertake to sustain certain conclusions of fact 
which utterly subvert, undermine and reverse these false 
and mistaken judgments. From their own admissions it 
is manifest that Mr. Buchanan was no more of a disunionist 
than Mr. Lincoln, and not nearly so much of one as Seward, 
Greely, Beecher or Wendell Phillips; that the doctrine of 
secession, the right of a State to withdraw from the Federal 
Union, was not solely indigenous to the South; that the 
views of the Buchanan administration on the constitutional 
right of the executive to coerce a seceding state, or to make 
war on its people, were exactly those then held by substan- 
tially all the great lawyers, judges and statesmen of the 
country, including Abraham Lincoln; that there v/as no 
spoliation of the public treasury, no apportionment of the 
federal military equipment, nor dispersion of the navy in 



12 Buchanan's administration 

the interest of any particular section; that in his efforts to 
maintain peace and prevent dismemberment of the Union, 
Mr. Buchanan was more aggressive, positive and definite 
than was Mr. Lincoln at the time ; that his Secretary of State, 
during the time the secession movement was organizing, 
was more courageous and determined than Mr. Lincoln's 
premier, even after rebellion became far more defiant and 
threatening; that the attitude of Lincoln's administration 
toward the Confederate agents of peace was more concilia- 
tory than Buchanan's; that in his efforts to preserve peace 
and effect a compromise, Mr. Buchanan had the encourage- 
ment and support of an overwhelming majority of the 
Northern people, and was hearkening to the almost unani- 
mous voice of those who represented their great moral and 
material interests ; that no act of his hastened or encouraged 
the outbreak of hostilities, and that nothing he might have 
done, and left undone, could have checked, prevented or 
suppressed the rebellion and the ensuing war; that Mr. 
Lincoln's utterances against force, invasion of Southern 
territory and resort to arms, from the time of his election 
until his inauguration, Avere much more emphatic for peace 
and conciliation than Mr. Buchanan's; that a Republican 
House of Representatives and Congress, as a whole, during 
that period, did nothing, and did not offer to do anything, 
to justify or support the president in assuming any other 
attitude toward the South or its rebellion than he assumed 
— in short, that Mr. Buchanan did no less than Mr. Lincoln 
woukl or could have done in his place during those four 
months, and Mr. Lincoln did, dared and said nothing be- 
fore, at and immediately after his inauguration to show he 
was not in full accord and sympathy with the policies of 
the Buchanan administration. 

As to the general proposition of acknowledging the right 
of secession or the policy of disunion, there is not to be 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 13 

found a line or letter in any document Mr. Buchanan ever 
wrote, or in any speech he ever uttered, to justify such an 
aspersion. While extremists North and South concurred 
in this view, he never entertained nor countenanced it. 
He was a Jackson Democrat from start to finish, and went 
the whole length of that warrior-statesman in antagonism 
to Calhoun's doctrine of nullification — which must not be 
confounded with secession. Some of the most eminent 
representatives of Southern sentiment, like JefTerson 
Davis, who believed in the right of secession, disputed 
nullification; and others — like Alexander H. Stephens and 
John B. Floyd — who conceded the right of secession, had 
consistently demonstrated the political and economic folly 
of its exercise. Howell Cobb, in his canvass for Governor 
of Georgia, had made an able and powerful argument 
against the right of secession; and Mr. Buchanan himself 
records that this was the principal reason he selected Cobb 
for a seat in his cabinet. 

On the other hand, there can be no mistake about the 
strong sentiment of the Abolitionists and the New Eng- 
landers generally, of such advanced leaders as Josiah Quincy, 
and John Quincy Adams, in their time, and of Horace Greely, 
William H. Seward, Henry Ward Beecher, William Lloyd 
Garrison and Wendell Phillips, of a later day, that secession 
was right and disunion was desirable. 

It was in Massachusetts, not in Alabama; by the Aboli- 
tionists, not the Democrats; led by Garrison, not by Davis, 
Toombs or Yancey — that the Constitution of the United 
States was publicly burned; the few hisses and wrathful 
exclamations that the deed drew forth were overborne by 
a thousand shouts of "Amen." It is an indisputable his- 
torical fact that when the extreme anti-slavery Northerners 
felt the constitutional contract and the final judicial con- 
struction of it warranted not only the existence of human 



14 Buchanan's administration 

slavery, but its extension into the territories; that the en- 
forcement of the Fugitive Slave Law was a duty imposed 
upon the States and on their people, and that there v/as no 
legal escape from these logical conclusions, they were quite 
reatly to declare the Federal Constitution a "league with 
death, and a covenant with hell;" to "half mast the starry 
flag, tear down the flaunting lie;" and to submit to a dis- 
solution of the compact of the States. It is reasonable to 
suppose that had the law been, or had it been construed to 
be, otherwise, the Southern extremists would have been 
just as disloyal and refractory, for it is as true of the right- 
eous as of the rogues that they ne'er feel the halter draw, 
" with good opinion of the law." 

It is quite true, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions 
of 1798 and 1799 declared the rights of States to nullify 
Federal statutes; but the Federalists, in opposing the an- 
nexation of Louisiana and the war of 1812, and the Hart- 
ford Convention of 1814, proclaimed the right of secession 
in even more defiant terms ; and down until the thunder of 
hostile cannon shook the land, the great body of Northern 
Abolitionists believed in the political preaching of Jedidiah 
Morse, that New England should get out of the L^nion to 
get rid of slavery. 

On the other hand, John C. Ropes, whose "Story of the 
Civil War" is probably the fairest and keenest of like 
dimensions yet written, says not a word dropped from 
Buchanan's lips to encourage the Southern hope "that the 
North would consent to a peaceable dissolution of the 
Union;" "nor did he ever yield an iota on the point of the 
abstract right of the Federal Government to maintain its 
hold on all the Southern forts." 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 15 



ALL SECTIONS OPPOSED TO WAR. 

None the less, the great mass of the people, North and 
South, were neither for disunion nor for war. They were 
favorable to almost any compromise on the slavery ques- 
tion that would preserve peace and union ; and Mr. Lincoln, 
long after the war began, expressed the popular notion 
when he said that if he could save the Union by destroying 
slavery he would destroy it, but that if he could save the 
Union by continuing slavery he was for its continuance. 
His inaugural pledged him to enforce the fugitive slave law. 

I am not now concerned to inquire whether this view 
was sagacious or ethical, humane or even statesmanlike. 
My proposition is that in the winter of 1860 and 1861 it 
was the view of the great majority of the Northern people; 
that Mr. Lincoln reflected and espoused it as fully and sin- 
cerely, and expressed it as freely and unmistakabl)^, as Mr. 
Buchanan; and that it is a shallow, false and wicked judg- 
ment which reprobates the one as cowardly and senile and 
praises the other as brave and sensible for cherishing the 
' same notions, even though they were erroneous. 

I hasten to the support of my second proposition, that 
they concurred in -their views as to what was then dis- 
cussed as the right and poUcy of "coercion." The expiring 
Thirty-sixth Congress met less than a month after Lincoln's 
election. That House was in full control of the Republicans, 
and they had elected the next Congress. Within three 
months they would be in complete power. Mr. Buchanan 
has been chiefly denounced for the tone of his annual 
message to that Congress. Not a blow had been struck; 
no State had passed an ordinance of secession; the North 
did not believe the South would secede ; the South did not 
believe the North would fight. The discussion was as yet 
only academic. 



16 Buchanan's administration 

Nevertheless, the New York "Tribune," whose editor 
was the most potential force in nominating and electing 
Mr. Lincoln, and which newspaper was " the most powerful 
organ of its party," declared three days after his election: 
"If the cotton States shall decide that they can do better 
out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in 
peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, 
but it exists nevertheless. * * * ^Yq shall resist all 
coercive measures." These views were reiterated from 
day to day. They were re-echoed by the Albany " Evening 
Journal," edited by Thurlow Weed, the nearest friend of 
Mr. Seward. Henry Ward Beecher, in his famous Boston 
speech, declared, about the same time, "I hold it will be 
an advantage for the South to go off." Gen. Scott, who had 
been a Whig candidate for president, who was the Com- 
manding General of the Army, and who later became one 
of Mr. Buchanan's severest critics, in his famous "Views," 
of October, 1860, had said: "To save time, the right of 
secession may be conceded." In March, 1861, when he was 
most intimate with Secretary Seward, and was discouraging 
the relief of Sumter, he urged the North to say to the seced- 
ing States, "Wayward Sisters, go in peace." 

If Mr. Lincoln antagonized these notions, he at least made 
no serious sound nor sign. He was the rising sun ; Buchanan 
was an evening star; and any views a retiring president 
might have had to express would have been cold and feeble 
rays by contrast with the bursting effulgence of the great 
orb of day. If the clarion call to battle was to be then 
sounded, it ought to have emanated from Springfield; if 
there was a demand for a Jackson, he should have ridden, 
like "Young Lochinvar," "out of the West." 

Nevertheless, while the leaders of Mr. Lincoln's party, 
and the chieftains of his campaign, were thus proclaiming 
the right of disunion and encouraging the South to secede, 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 17 

Mr. Buchanan declared in his message that grave danger 
threatened the country against which he had long sounded 
warnings; he prayed God to preserve the Constitution and 
the Union throughout all generations; with courteous re- 
gard for his successor, he proclaimed that he had been 
fairly and constitutionally elected, and that his success 
justified no revolution; he recognized guarantees that Mr. 
Lincoln "would not attempt violation of any clear con- 
stitutional right." He stated the doctrine of secession 
and denounced it as "wholly inconsistent with the history 
as well as the character of the Constitution," and cited 
Jackson and Madison, Southern statesmen, to contravene 
it. With fine touches of eloquence, he said: 

"This government, therefore, is a great and powerful 
government, invested with all the attributes of sovereignty 
over the special subjects to which its authority extends. 
Its framers never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds 
of its own destruction, nor were they at its creation guilty 
of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution. It 
was not intended by its framers to be 'the baseless fabric 
of a vision,' which, at the touch of the enchanter, would 
vanish into thin air, but a substantial and mighty fabric, 
capable of resisting the slow decay of time, and of defying 
the storms of ages." 

Again he said: 

"The fact is, that our Union rests upon public opinion, 
and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed 
in civil war. If it cannot live in the affections of the people, 
it must one day perish. Congress possesses many means of 
preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed 
in their hand to preserve it by force. 

" But may I be permitted solemnly to invoke my country- 
men to pause and deliberate, before they determine to de- 
stroy this, the grandest temple which has ever been dedi- 



18 Buchanan's administration 

cated to human freedom since the world began. It has 
been consecrated by the blood of our fathers, by the glories 
of the past and by the hopes of the future. The Union has 
already made us the most prosperous, and ere long will, 
if preserved, render us the most powerful nation on the face 
of the earth. In every foreign region of the globe the title 
of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when 
pronounced in a foreign land, it causes the hearts of our 
countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely, when we 
reach the brink of the yawning abyss, we shall recoil with 
horror from the last fatal plunge. 

"By such a dread catastrophe, the hopes of the friends 
of freedom throughout the world would be destroyed, and 
a long night of leaden despotism would enshroud the nations. 
Our example for more than eighty years would not only be 
lost, but it would be quoted as conclusive proof that man 
is unfit for self-government." 

I might quote many like passages throbbing with the 
loftiest patriotism. Certainly no man can recall them 
without feeling that the touching and oft-quoted sentiments 
of Mr. Lincoln's inaugural reached no higher plane of 
patriotic sentiment and touched no deeper chord of popular 
feeling. George Ticknor Curtis, a Yankee of Yankees, who 
hatl argued the Dred Scott case for the slave, declares: 
" After a long familiarity Vvith our constitutional literature, 
I know of no document which, within the same compass, 
states so clearly and accurately what I regard as the true 
theory of our Constitution as this message of President 
Buchanan. Had I the power to change it, I would not 
alter a word." It may be said that Mr. Curtis was the paid 
biographer of Mr. Buchanan ; but he was also the liiographer 
of Mr. Webster, and he had a reputation as a constitutional 
lawyer that he would not risk for any paltry reward of 
political literature. 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 19 

NEITHER TIMID NOR WEAK. 

Meantime, as conditions changed, the situation became 
more alarming. States seceded. Congressmen withdrew and 
cabinet ministers who sympathized with secession quit or 
were forced out of his cabinet, but Mr. Buchanan only per- 
sisted and became correspondingly more emphatic in his 
acts and utterances. There was, however, no reversion nor 
inconsistency in the executive position — neither timidity 
nor show of weakness. In his special message of January 
8, 1861, he repeated his conviction that "no State has a 
right by its own act to secede from the Union or throw off 
its Federal obligations at pleasure." While he declared, 
in almost the same terms that Mr. Lincoln adopted — months 
later and when the rebellion was far more advanced — that 
he "had no right to make aggressive war upon any State," 
he declared, on the other hand, in words that his successor, 
sixty days later, almost identically appropriated, " The right 
and duty to use military force defensively against those who 
resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal 
functions, and against those who assail the property of the 
Federal Government, is clear and undeniable." Lawyer 
and statesman as he was, he knew the limitations upon the 
executive, and what were the constitutional prerogatives 
of the legislative branch of government. He had taken a 
solemn oath to regard both these, and he was liable to 
impeachment and subject to disgrace if he did not. He 
declared Congress, which was in session, to be "the only 
tribunal under Providence possessing the power to meet 
the existing emergency." He said: "To them, exclusively, 
belongs the power to declare war, or to authorize the em- 
ployment of military force in all cases contemplated by the 
Constitution; and they alone possess the power to remove 
grievances which might lead to war, and to secure peace 



20 Buchanan's administration 

and union to this distracted country. On them, and on 
them alone, rests the responsibihty." 

In his views and in his manner of expressing them, the 
president not only had the advice and cordial approval of 
his Attorney-General, Jeremiah S. Black — to whom Rhodes 
gives unstinted praise for purity, patriotism, statesman- 
ship and legal learning — but what is far more to our present 
purpose, all that Buchanan then said and all he did had the 
legal, cordial and unqualified support of three other mem- 
bers of his cabinet, who subsequently became most illus- 
trious leaders of the Republican party, Edwin M. Stanton, 
the great War Secretary — the erection of a statue to him 
has just been recommended by Secretary Taft; Joseph Holt, 
to whom, after eminent service, Lincoln offered the Attor- 
ney Generalship; John A. Dix, later a Major General, Re- 
publican Governor of New York and Ambassador to France 
— and yet best remembered because, as a Democrat, and 
from his seat in Buchanan's cabinet, he sent o\it that thrill- 
ing message, "If any man hauls dov\'n the American flag, 
shoot him on the spot." Judge Holt is on record as testi- 
fying that Mr. Buchanan's official labors ought to be 
crowned by the glory that belongs " to an enlightened states- 
manship and unsullied patriotism." 

Not only did they all accept, approve and stand by their 
chief's public declarations, but they remained in his confi- 
dence and trusting him until he took his seat beside Mr. 
Lincoln in the carriage ^^'hich bore them to the ceremony 
of transferring the presidency. It is inconceivable that 
these eminent loyalists and high-minded gentlemen could 
have stayed in his ]3olitical household if he was the base 
and timid creature whom partisan historians have ])ictured 
and pilloried. Whether he dominated them or subjected 
himself to their guidance, it is an indecent judgment that 
stigmatizes the administration of which they were all 
members as "weak" or "disloyal." 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 21 

Meantime, what answer was Congress, with a RepubUcan 
House of Representatives, making to the executive alarms 
and appeals? For three months, to the last day of his 
administration, that body remained in session; and Buch- 
anan exhausted all power he had over its successor by call- 
ing an extra session of the Senate, to meet March 5, 1861. 
While the outgoing Congress repudiated all proposals of 
compromise to prevent civil war, it took no measures what- 
ever to retain the cotton or the border States within the 
Union. It heard of one State seceding after another, and 
witnessed the withdrawal of member after member of 
Congress. The senators who had listened with "cold 
neutrality" to Jefferson Davis's vindictive attacks upon 
Mr. Buchanan, for denying the right of secession, sobbed 
with personal sympathy when Mr. Davis delivered his 
famous and pathetic speech of withdrawal from association 
with his colleagues. That even then this most conspicuous 
of Southern leaders was not Vvithout hope of a peaceful 
reconciliation is attested by a touching domestic annal, 
recorded by Mrs. Davis: "Inexpressibly sad he left the 
Senate chamber with faint hope; and that night I heard 
the oft-reiterated prayer: 'May God have us in His holy 
keeping, and grant that before it is too late peaceful coun- 
sels may prevail.'" 

AN INACTIVE CONGRESS. 

It makes nothing against Mr. Buchanan's policy to 
undertake to justify the inaction of Congress by the tre- 
mendous political and popular efforts then making in 
every quarter to effect a compromise and avert war; or by 
the very general belief that any aggression by Congress 
would fan into conflagration a flame, otherwise soon to 
flicker out. Certainly if the only branch of government to 
which are entrusted the raising of money, the equipment 



22 Buchanan's administration 

of armies and the declaration and carrying on of war re- 
mained inert, after repeated warnings, no right nor power 
existed in the president to supplant or even supplement it. 
All the more was this the case in view of the fact that a 
new executive was so soon to be inaugurated and a new 
Congress qualified. 

It must also be remembered that although the Federal 
statutes then gave the executive power to call forth the 
militia to suppress insurrections against a State Govern- 
ment, no such power existed to suppress insurrections 
against the Federal Government. This omission was per- 
mitted to exist until after the end of Mr. Buchanan's term ; 
its grant to Lincoln, by the Act of July 29, 1861, was evi- 
dence of the necessity for it. Every request for like power 
to President Buchanan was ignored; and even after forts 
and mints had been seized, and the aggressions begun 
which he always declared would justify defensive warfare, 
a bill to give the president power to call out militia or accept 
volunteers to protect and recover military forts, magazines, 
arsenals and other property belonging to the United States 
was withdrawn the same day it was reported — killed as soon 
as it saw light. Four bills in all to furnish the president 
with military means to provide for the collection of duties 
at Southern ports of entry were introduced and not one of 
them was passed. 

Nor let it be forgotten that when President Jackson 
grappled with nullification, a patriotic Congress gave him 
the "Compromise Act" and "Force Bill", which enabled 
him to act with vigor and success. These powers expired 
by limitation in 1834, and what had been given to Jackson 
then was persistently denied to his loyal follower in the 
executive chair in 1861. A striking contrast of legislative 
support to the executive is afforded by the alacrity with 
which Congress strengthened Madison's hands, in 1812; 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 23 

likewise the wild rush with which a later Congress led, if 
it did not drive, McKinley to war with Spain. 

In the face of these historical facts, what a pitiful sub- 
terfuge to lay the blame of the war or the earlier successes 
of the Confederacy to the deliberate dispersion of the army 
and navy, the surrender of forts and stores and the plunder 
of the arsenals — with connivance of the Federal adminis- 
tration! I pause with little patience to refute these well- 
worn lies. Any student or inquirer who really wants to 
get at the truth can easily reach the head- waters ; though it 
is certainly discouraging to see how recklessly the falsehood 
persists. Mr. Buchanan effectually refuted it in his book, 
published in 1865; Judge Black apparently stamped the 
life out of it in his unanswerable letters to Henry Wilson; 
as early as 1861, a Republican committee of a Republican 
House, organized to convict ex-Secretary Floyd, the very 
head and front of this offending, reported the case not 
made out, its chairman expressed the opinion that the 
charges were founded in "rumor, speculation and misap- 
prehension." The facts were that of the useful muskets 
distributed by the Government in 1860, the Northern 
States received three times as many as the Southern ; of the 
rifles, there were divided in all between six Southern States 
scarcely enough in the aggregate for half a regiment. Two 
years before Lincoln was elected the Government had con- 
demned as worthless and unserviceable 500,000 muskets — 
and after nobody could be induced to buy them at any 
price, less than one-third of these condemned weapons were 
shipped to Southern arsenals, in order to make room in 
Northern storehouses for useful and effective arms. As 
their recoil was worse than their discharge, the North 
would have been lucky had the Confederates got the whole 
of them. The story of the cannon surreptitiously shipped 
from Pittsburg to Galveston is best answered by a resolu- 



24 Buchanan's administration 

tion of the Northern City's Councils, officially thanking 
Buchanan, Black and Holt for preventing any such ship- 
ment. Mr. Rhodes, after careful investigation of the 
whole story, unhestiatingly accepts the refutation of these 
long-lived canards. Gen. Samuel W. Crawford, one of the 
few who were in Fort Sumter when the flag went down, 
and again when it was hauled up, in his "Genesis of the 
Civil War," also demonstrates their falsity. 

The idea that the naval arm of the government's power 
was disarranged to favor secession has not the slightest 
historic foundation. The head of that department was a 
New England Unionist, Isaac Toucey. He was a man of 
utmost loyalty and highest integrity. Every attempt by 
official investigation failed to discredit him. He fully sat- 
isfied a hostile Senate Committee that at the outbreak of 
Secession our squadrons at foreign stations were feeble; 
they had not been augmented in proportion to the increase 
of our commerce ; none of them could have been diminished 
without sacrificing its safety and the interests and safety 
of those engaged in it. While the nation was praying and 
protesting that war might be averted, to have recalled our 
foreign squadrons certainly would have been "lunatic 
rashness;" and it would only have helped to "make 
trouble," without contributing to its suppression or relief. 

One of the most frequent of the reckless accusations 
against Mr. Buchanan is that when the Federal office-holders 
in the seceding States abandoned their places, he did not 
promptly fill them. He repeatedly demonstrated to Con- 
gress that he could get no other citizens of these States 
to take the offices and discharge their duties; but, as Mr. 
Rhodes frankly points out, when he named for Collector 
of Charleston, Peter Mclntire, of Pennsylvania, an emi- 
nently fit man, of high courage and decision of character, 
the Senate never acted on the nomination; and, in brief, no 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 25 

Congressional aid v/hatever was extended to the president 
in any effort to avert war, effect compromise, defend the 
government property, re-take military stations or fill the 
abandoned posts of civil duty. 

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE. 

But if the action — or rather, the non-action — of Congress 
justified the attitude and conduct of the administration in 
those days of doubt, how immeasm-ably more was it the 
reflection of and backed by the overwhelming voice of the 
people, all over the North, and manifested in so many and 
various forms? 

While the venerable Crittenden v/as so strenuously urging 
upon Congress the adoption of his compromise measures, 
the country waited patiently to see if Mr. Seward — destined 
to sit at Mr. Lincoln's right hand — was to unite the genius 
of Clay for compromise with the enthusiasm of Webster for 
the Union. The radical Republicans of the North, and the 
fire-eating Secessionists of the South, were alike disappoint- 
ed, and no authoritative voice from the new administration 
commanded attention or follovsing. 

John Sherman says: "At this time the public mind in 
the North was decidedly in favor of concessions to the 
South. The Democrats of the North vv^ould have agreed 
to any proposition to secure peace and the Union, and the 
Republicans would have acquiesced in the Crittenden 
compromise or in any measure approved by Lincoln and 
Seward." 

Had the incoming Lincoln administration then declared 
for compromise, there vrould have been no v/ar. Had it 
declared for effective and aggressive measures of coercion, 
it would only have hastened the outbreak of hostilities at 
a time when the country was even less prepared for and 
more averse to it than when Sumter v/as fired upon. How- 



26 Buchanan's administration 

ever, the oracle was dumb — and nothing that can be said 
in denunciation of Buchanan's vacillation and uncertainty 
cannot be said with far more truth and more force of Mr. 
Lincoln, of those who had been his chief supporters and of 
those who were about to become his Cabinet Council. 

Another illustration of the preponderating public desire 
— North and South — to avert war is found in the response 
which answered Virginia's call for a Peace Congress. 
Twenty-one States sent commissioners to assemble on the 
same day that only six of the Cotton States met to form 
the Southern Confederacy. The Peace Congress was made 
up of men of "character, ability and distinction." One of 
the Pennsylvania delegates was our own late townsman, 
Hon. Thomas E. Franklin. An eminent lawyer, a man of 
property, lineage and high social position, a churchman 
and a Republican in politics, he was a fine type of the best 
citizenship of that day. The "plan of adjustment" this 
conference agreed upon was not accepted with favor by 
Congress. I do not refer to it in approval, but only to 
further illustrate the earnest, organized, official efforts 
making for peace. For a president to have arrested or 
disturbed them by precipitate call to arms would have been 
met with overwhelming rebuke and indignation; it could 
only have weakened the Union cause and invigorated the 
aggressions of the Disunionists. Absolute proof of this 
contention is afforded by the contemporary expressions of 
popular opinion, and by the utterances not only of Mr. 
Lincoln, on his way from his Illinois home to the White 
House, but from the lips of men who already were, or were 
to become, pillars of his administration and party. Gen. 
Daniel E. Sickles, who is the only living member of that 
memorable House of 1860-1, and who became a Union hero 
and a Republican martyr — threatened that the secession 
of the Southern States would be followed by New York 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 27 

City; Gen. Dix concurred; Senator Simon Cameron — Lin- 
coln's first Secretary of War — was desirous of saving the 
Union and preserving peace "at the sacrifice not only of 
feeling, but of principle." 

All reliable authorities agree that up to, and for a con- 
siderable time after, the end of Mr. Buchanan's term, a 
large majority of the people of the North, and a very con- 
siderable portion of the South, were earnestly for peace — 
at almost any price. Tumultuous popular assemblies all 
over the North loudly voiced this demand. In the Re- 
publican city of Philadelphia, in Independence Hall, where 
American freedom was born. Bishop Potter blessing the 
gathering and the cause, and Mayor Henry presiding, elo- 
quent orators of all parties were cheered to the echo when 
they pleaded and declared in town meeting for a policy of 
forbearance and protection to the slaveholders in their 
constitutional rights. In the city of Boston, head and 
heart of New England, Faneuil Hall, "the cradle of liberty," 
rocked with the surging oratory of like appeals. In the 
very recently published life — almost an autobiography — 
of William Pitt Fessenden, it is recorded that "in all the 
great cities, especially among public men, it was hoped that 
a compromise would be effected. * * * Republican 
who favored a vigorous policy, seemed temporarily out of 
favor. Conciliation was the popular term. Mr. Lincoln 
believed that gentleness and a conciliatory attitude would 
prevent secession." 

It is true that the voice of Senator "Zach" Chandler 
sounded discordant above the prevailing placidity; but his 
sanguinary expressions that "without a little blood-letting 
this Union will not be worth a rush" — like the gory demand 
of a Southern bravado that "we must sprinkle blood in 
their faces" — was generally regarded as incendiary and 
fratricidal — if not impious. Even the fierce and fiery 



28 Buchanan's administration 

John A. Logan testifies that he "believed in exhausting all 
peaceable means before a resort to arms." 

FOR PEACE AT ANY PRICE. 

Appleton's Annual Encyclopaedia for 1861 estimates that 
of four million voters for president, over three million 
would have approved such a peaceable settlement of the 
difhculties as might have been satisfactory to all the South- 
ern States whose complaints were founded upon questions 
connected with slavery. " The voice of the people of the 
country at that time," this authority says', "was overwhelm- 
ingly in favor of conciliation, forbearance and compro- 
mise." 

Thurlow Weed, the confidential adviser of Seward, urged 
concession and a constitutional convention. The New 
York "Herald" deprecated coercion and declared each 
State had the right to break the tie of the Confederacy and 
to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion. 

Nor did this prevailing condition of popular sentiment 
terminate with Mr. Buchanan's retirement. Mr. Morse 
admits that during all the three months in which his con- 
duct has been so savagely criticised, one-half the people of 
the South were opposed to division; in the North every- 
where words of compromise and secession were spoken; 
coercion was mentioned only to be denounced. Had the 
executive, he concedes, "asserted the right and duty of 
forcil)le coercion, he would not have found at his back the 
indispensable force, moral and physical, of the people." 
For over a month of the Lincoln administration this state 
of popular feeling continued, and up to the very time of 
firing on Fort Sumter, he says "the almost universal feeling 
of the people at the North, so far as it could be discerned, 
was compromising, conciliatory and strongly opposed to 
any act of war." 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 29 

As late as April 5, ISGl, Gen. Robert Anderson v/rote, 
in a private letter, that he must take upon himself all the 
blame for the government not sending him relief. Had he 
demanded re-inforcements, he says he knows President 
Buchanan's Secretary of War would have dispatched them 
at all hazards ; but he says he knew the coming of additional 
troops would inaugurate civil war; and his policy, he de- 
clares, was to keep still and preserve peace. 

Because, then, "a little fire" ultimately kindled "a great 
matter," shall one be denounced as "timid" or "traitor- 
ous" because he strove to quench the spark, or refused to 
blow it into ravaging flame? 

Surely it is not necessary to show that during all this 
period, and even later, Mr. Lincoln was in full accord with 
the policy of his predecessor and his own party; that he 
was alike submissive to and controlled by the manifest 
popular will of the Union-loving and peace-seeking part of 
the country. Neither one moved more slowly toward war 
than the other; and no faster in accelerating the outbreak 
of hostilities. 

But to clinch a proposition w^hich I earnestly maintain 
has been nailed fast, let us swiftly follow Mr. Lincoln's tour 
eastward. He said at one place — and I challenge you to 
find it more strongly stated in any of Mr. Buchanan's 
utterances — "The marching of an army into South Caro- 
lina Avithout the consent of her people, and with hostile 
intent toward them, would be invasion; and it would be 
coercion, also, if the South Carolinians were forced to 
submit." 

Remembering the declarations of himself and his party's 
platform against the lawless "invasion" of any State, v/hat 
less or more could these words mean to the South than its 
people inferred from any declaration Mr. Buchanan had 
made? 



30 Buchanan's administration 

At Columbus, Mr. Lincoln expressed much less solicitude 
about the future than President Buchanan was exhibiting. 
He said : '' Nobody is suffering anything * * * all we want 
is time, patience and a reliance on that God who has never 
forsaken His people." At Pittsburg he declared there was 
" no crisis but an artificial one," and predicted that if people 
only kept cool, the trouble would come to an end. In Phila- 
delphia he assumed a decidedly anti-war tone : " There need 
be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity for it. I 
am not in favor of such a course; * * * there will be no 
bloodshed unless it be forced upon the government, and 
then it will be compelled to act in self-defense." "The crisis, 
the panic, the anxiety of the country at this time is artificial." 
At Harrisburg, when the speaker of welcome tendered him 
military support from Pennsylvania, Lincoln rebuked him, 
and said : " It is not with any pleasure that I contemplate the 
possibility that a necessity may arise in this country for the 
use of the miUtary arm." 

In none of these is heard the voice of the " Son of Thun- 
der"— at no time the iron ring of the "Rough Rider's" 
hoofs. It is true, he said, "the right of a State to secede 
is not an open or debatable question," but Mr. Buchanan 
had said exactly this to Congress and the country two 
months earlier. The concluding words of the Lincoln in- 
augural are classic in the literature of eloquence; but in 
parallel passages with extracts already quoted from Mr. 
Buchanan's message, these latter may challenge comparison 
for sound law, lofty patriotism and even for rich rhetoric. 

MR. LINCOLN'S EARLY ATTITUDE. 

The incoming president reiterated the pledge of his plat- 
form that each separate state had a right to control its own do- 
mestic institutions ; he denounced the lawless invasion of the 
soil of any State or Territory by armed force as the gravest of 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 31 

crimes. He gave his full adherence to the fugitive slave 
law and its enforcement, as guaranteed by the constitution. 
Strictly in accord with the policy and declarations of Mr. 
Buchanan, he promised there should be no bloodshed or 
violence unless forced upon the National authority; that 
Federal property would be protected and the Federal reve- 
nues collected, but, beyond what might be necessary for 
this, he declared there would be ''no invasion, no using of 
force against or among the people anywhere." To the 
criticism that Mr. Buchanan had not filled the vacant 
Federal offices in the South, Mr. Lincoln then made an 
answer, that ought to be conclusive now: "While the strict 
legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the ex- 
ercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irri- 
tating, and so nearly impracticable withal, I deem it better 
for the time to forego for the time the uses of such offices.^' 
Mr. Elson admits that this was a plain avowal that he 
would follow Buchanan's policy for the time in his attitude 
toward Secession. 

The only significant act of the Congress just deceased 
had been to adopt a constitutional amendment practically 
making it impossible to ever abolish or interfere with slav- 
ery. Mr. Lincoln went out of his way to say not only that 
that was already implied constitutional law, but he set his 
personal stamp of approval upon it by saying, " I have no 
objections to its being made express and irrevocable." 
And yet for signing the measure which the noble Lincoln 
thus approved, the despised Buchanan is denounced by 
many so-called historians of the present day as a dough- 
faced dotard and a double-dyed dastard! 

Surely when Thersites plays the role of Herodotus and 
Plutarch, Clio must hide her face in shame. 

Old Richard W. Thompson, as garrulous as most men 
must be who boast and write "Recollections of Sixteen 



32 Buchanan's administration 

Presidents," sees in Buchanan's peace policy an imitation 
of Nero fiddling while Rome burned; but Mr. Lincoln's 
similar temporizing is to the same dim eyes due only to 
"the promptings of his own generous nature" and the hope 
that his appeal to the reason and patriotism of the Seces- 
sionists would not be unavailing. 

Is it any wonder Sir Robert Walpole said: "Anything 
but history for history must be false!" 

It is often said that when Mr. Lincoln raised the flag 
over Independence Hall a new star glittered in the field; 
but the act admitting the thirty-fourth State v/as approved 
by Mr. Buchanan; and "bleeding Kansas" — so long the 
spoil of contending foes — alternately outraged like the 
Sabine matrons and slashed like the stainless daughter of 
Virginius — now quite recovered from her wounds and woes, 
without a furrow on her forehead or a ruffle on her raiment, 
quietly glided into the sisterhood of States at the pen 
stroke of a Democratic executive. 

But if Mr. Lincoln was no advance upon Mr. Buchanan 
in aggressiveness and indicated no departure from his policy 
in the inaugural, how much more bloodthirsty and bellig- 
erent was his attitude during the month or more that passed 
before rebel guns boomed across the placid waters of Charles- 
ton harbor? 

At the risk of having to tire your patience and confront 
melting ice cream and cooling coffee, for the sake of too 
tardy justice to a man long dead — and very dead — I beg 
you hear briefly the story of those five weeks ; and remember 
how much further and v/ith what long leaps Rebellion had 
ailvanced. 

The most notable cabinet appointments were, of course, 
the Secretaries of State and of War. We have already seen 
how much further Seward V\-as willing to go in surrender of 
the Union than Buchanan ; and surely it was not so serious 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 33 

a strain upon Cameron to "sacrifice principle" for policy — 
for in this respect he and Buchanan furnished life-long 
illustrations of opposing ideas of public duty and political 
propriety. 

Nicolay and Hay give their subject credit for "infinite 
tact" in dealing with Mr. Seward; but is it permissible to 
find treason, cowardice and timidity in Mr. Buchanan's 
dalliance with incipient secession in the closet and yet 
praise the attitude of Seward and Lincoln in temporizing 
with full-armed Rebellion in the open? 

John Sherman admits that the first forty days of the 
Lincoln administration was the darkest hour in the history 
of the United States. He declares that it was "a time of 
humiliation, timidity and feebleness." Sumner deprecated 
Lincoln's "deplorable hesitancy." Six weeks after his 
inauguration, Stanton wrote to Buchanan that there was 
a strong feeling of distrust in the candor and sincerity of 
Lincoln personally and of his cabinet. Emerson, with 
rare literary skill, condones the president's perplexities 
because "the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tor- 
nado." 

It is to the discredit of our political system — no par- 
ticular reproach to Mr. Lincoln — that for months the chief 
concern of his administration was the distribution of the 
offices to clamorous partisans, rather than the distribution 
of troops to suppress the rebellion. The demands upon his 
time and the solicitation of his supporters were not to 
avert war, save the Union or suppress the rebels, but to 
lavishly ladle out patronage. Not only do Stanton, Schurz 
and Seward testify to this, but Mr. Lincoln himself said: 
"I seem like one sitting in a palace, assigning apartments 
to importunate applicants, v/hile the structure is on fire 
and likely soon to perish." 

With this disaster in prospect, we find, as late as March 



34 Buchanan's administration 

12th, five of his cabinet ministers voting against provision- 
ing Fort Sumter — and only one for it. Mr. Lincohi let them 
determine his course. And yet Buchanan was "weak" 
and his cabinet a "nest of traitors," because they had 
not relieved and supported Major Anderson! As late as 
July 16, 1861, Stanton wrote to Buchanan: "Your adminis- 
tration's policy, in reference to both Sumter and Pickens, 
is fully vindicated by the course of the present administra- 
tion for forty days after the inauguration of Lincoln." 

Mr. Buchanan has been hounded from Dan to Beersheba, 
because three months earlier he had, with courtesy and 
dignity, accorded a single interview to the Commissioners 
from South Carolina. Before the year 1860 closed, he 
had peremptorily rejected their demands for the with- 
drawal of Federal troops from Charleston harbor; he had 
firmly declared to them his purpose to defend Fort Sumter 
by all the means in his power against hostile attacks from 
whatever quarter they might proceed ; and a few days later, 
when they replied disrespectfully, he declined to receive 
their communication or to ever again see or negotiate 
with them. Later, through his Secretary of War, he 
warned South Carolina of the fearful responsibility it took 
if its authorities assaulted Sumter, and by periling the 
lives of " the handful of brave and loyal men shut up within 
its walls," "plungetl our common country into the horrors 
of civil war." 

And yet long after Jefferson Davis had been elected 
president of the Confederacy; and while its Congress was 
formulating plans to organize an army and navy; when 
State after State had wheeled into the secession column. 
Confederate Commissioners to the Lincoln administration 
came with confidence to Washington; though they were 
not formally received, they were in close touch with Seward; 
they remained long enough to get his assurances that the 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 35 

evacuation of Fort Sumter was the arranged policy of the 
new administration. Mr. Morse is forced to admit that 
even later Mr. Lincoln gave the Confederates assurances 
that " no provisioning or re-inforcement should be attempted 
without warning" — and it will be remembered that the 
assault only began after he gave such notice. Secretary 
Seward was even then writing to Mr. Charles Francis Adams, 
our minister to England, the hopelessness of carrying on a 
civil war; and so distant seemed the danger of it, that 
Massachusetts, under the lead of her great war governor, 
John A. Andrew, as late as April 11, after having made 
military preparations for three months, practically dis- 
armed the Commonwealth. 

About the same time, Wendell Phillips declared the Gulf 
States had a right to a separate government and defiantly 
said: "You cannot go through Massachusetts and recruit 
men to bombard Charleston or NeAv Orleans." 

Even when Montgomery Blair — the only Jackson Demo- 
crat in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet — urged that Fort Sumter be 
relieved, without reference to Pickens or any other Federal 
possession— and warned his chief that South Carolina 
would strike a blow at National authority from which it 
would take "years of bloody strife" to recover — Mr. Lin- 
coln, with at least as great "timidity" and "indecision" as 
ever Mr. Buchanan had shown, sided with and acted upon 
the contrary advice of Seward, Chase and Cameron. 

On April 13, the most Mr. Lincoln would say to the Vir- 
ginia Commissioners was that he might repossess himself 
of the public property and suspend the mail service in the 
States then in defiant rebellion against the nation. He 
substantially repeated this in his subsequent message to 
Congress, which, be it noted, he did not assemble for four 
months. 

And yet Mr. Blaine, who at times tries to be fair, thinks 



36 Buchanan's administration 

if Buchanan had had Jackson's hickory will and Taylor's 
stubborn courage, history would have been changed. It is 
a little difficult to see why Lincoln could not have called 
these martial "spirits from the vasty deep" as easily as 
Buchanan; they would just as likely have come at one sum- 
mons as the other— as readily in the balmy April spring 
days, when rebellion's crop was high in the stalk, as in the 
cheerless December time, when its roots were yet locked 
in winter's clutch, 

JUDGE BLACK ON MR. BUCHANAN. 

Not to prolong my share in the argument — which we 
shall soon see has another side — nor to multiply illustrations 
from a copious, if not inexhaustible, fountain of authori- 
ties, I quote and adopt a summary of Mr. Buchanan's 
character and conduct from a source so much more authori- 
tative and by a pen so much more skillful than mine, that 
no paraphrase could fail to mar it: 

"The proofs of his great ability and his eminent public 
services are found on every page of his country's history, 
from 1820 to 1861. During all that long period he steadily, 
faithfully and powerfully sustained the principles of free 
constitutional government. This nation never had a truer 
friend, nor its laws a defender who would more cheerfully 
have given his life to save them from violation. No man 
was ever slandered so brutally. His life was literally 
lied away. In the last months of his administration he 
devoted all the energies of his mind and body to the great 
duty of saving the Union, if possible, from dissolution and 
civil war. He knew all the dangers to which it was exposed, 
and it would, therefore, be vain to say that he was not 
alarmed for his country; but he showed no sign of un- 
manly fear on his own account. He met all his vast re- 
sponsibilities as fairly as any chief magistrate we ever 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 37 

had. In no case did he shrink from or attempt to evade 
them. The accusation of timidity and indecision is most 
preposterous. His faults were all of another kind ; his reso- 
lutions once formed were generally immovable to a degree 
that bordered on obstinacy. On every matter of great 
importance he deliberated cautiously, and sometimes tried 
the patience of his friends by refusing to act until he had 
made up an opinion which he could live and die by. These 
characteristics explain the fact that his whole political life, 
from the time he entered Congress until he retired from 
the presidency — all his acts, speeches and papers — have 
a consistency which belongs to those of no other American 
statesman. He never found it necessary to cross his own 
path or go back upon his pledges." 

I have touched upon a single epoch of his public life — 
a brief three months of his official career — albeit, upon 
another and more fitting occasion I should not shrink from 
the task of maintaining the proposition with which, in 
1883, his biographer concluded his work: "He was the 
most eminent statesman yet given by this great Common- 
wealth to the service of the country since the Constitution 
was established." I re-affirm this, after twenty-five years, 
notwithstanding Senator Penrose is a hopeful candidate 
for re-election; Senator Knox is even a less hopeless candi- 
date for president, and the sculptor has nearly finished the 
heroic statue of Senator Quay, which is soon to add splendor 
to an already too splendid State capitol. 

At the further risk of being tiresome and irrelevant, I 
must ask you to listen to a postscript. I have little faith 
in reported death-bed experiences. Dr. Osier has said that 
hundreds of recorded and reported cases, studied particu- 
larly with reference to modes of death and the sensation of 
dying, have satisfied medical science that the educated man 
at least dies usually "wondering, but uncertain, generally 



38 Buchanan's administration 

unconscious and unconcerned;" and that the Preacher was 
right: "As the one dieth so dieth the other." And yet, 
somehow, fanciful as it may be, I hke to think that the 
righteous man will realize the confidence of the Psalmist, 
"I will lay me down in peace." 

From the time he left the presidency, Mr. Buchanan 
lived here among us. Many of the people of this town 
were no kinder to him than the historians have been, and 
quite as unjust. He outlived the storm of war, but while 
it raged, no unpatriotic sentiment ever fell from his lips or 
pen. In the fall of 1861, he wrote a public letter, appealing 
to a "loyal and powerful people" to sustain "a war made 
inevitable by the Confederate assault," calling for "brave 
and patriotic volunteers," and declaring that it was no 
time for peace propositions, but only for "prompt, ener- 
getic and united action" to support the president "with all 
the men and the means at the command of the country 
in a vigorous and successful prosecution of the war." He 
maintained that attitude until it ended. During its contin- 
uance, lest the publication might embarrass his successors, 
he withheld the defense and vindication which he was eager 
to print in 1861. 

The progress of events and the revolutionary changes 
they wrought in our governmental system, if they inspired 
no public regrets, certainly suggested to him no private 
remorse. October 21, 1865, he writes: 

"I pursued a settled, consistent line of policy from the 
beginning to the end, and, on reviewing my past conduct, 
I do not recollect a single important measure which I should 
desire to recall, even if this were in my power. Under this 
conviction, I have enjoyed a tranquil and cheerful mind, 
notwithstanding the abuse I have received, in full confi- 
dence that my countrymen would eventually do justice." 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 39 

For this he may long wait; the judgment of his own con- 
science, I am sure, never tarried nor faltered. 

A DEVOUT MAN.* 

Mr. Buchanan, from his youth up, was a devout man. 
Born of positively pious parentage, the Scriptures were his 
"horn-book" and private prayer his daily habit. One of 
his most contemptuous — I almost wrote contemptible — 
critics flippantly complains that he once asked for time 
to take with him, to closet conference with his God, a vex- 
atious public question. His fastidious horror of being 
made conspicuous long withheld him from making open 
profession of his faith. The late Rev. Dr. John W. Nevin 
was his spiritual adviser ; they had long and solemn confer- 
ences on theology. Dr. Nevin says "horse vespertina^" 
they might be called — held, as they were mostly, in the 
autumnal twilight, on, what seemed to be for both engaged 
in them, " the utmost verge of time." His spiritual adviser 
has recorded that Mr. Buchanan " felt himself to be on the 
borders of the eternal world, and was fully awake to the 
dread issues of the life to come. But with all this, his spirit 
abode in quiet confidence and peace, and the ground of his 
trust throughout was the mercy of God through the right- 
eousness of Jesus Christ. There vras nothing like enthusi- 
asm, of course, in his experience ; the general nature of the 
man made that impossible. His religion showed itself 
rather in the form of fixed trust in God, thankfulness for 
His past mercy and general resignation to His holy will." 
Dr. Nevin's own counsel influenced his determination to 
associate with the Church of his ancestors. 

In the early forenoon of a September Sabbath, 1865, in 



•Adapted from "A Pennsylvania Presbyterian President," by the Author, 
Lancaster, Pa., 1907. 



40 Buchanan's administration 

the rather gloomy basement of the Presbyterian Church, 
in Lancaster, five persons only being present, this singularly 
pure-minded man — now old and "broken with the storms 
of state" — with a career behind him such as none in the 
city of his home has ever had before or since, came, even as 
a little child, and the modest minute of the proceedings 
runs thus: 

"Hon. James Buchanan, after being examined on his 
experimental evidence of piety, was admitted to the Com- 
munion and fellowship of this Church." 

An hour later, the same Lord's Day, in the sight of a then 
not numerous congregation, he who had risen from the 
humble home at "Stony Batter" to the first seat in the 
land, who had shone resplendent at foreign com*ts and 
had stood unabashed in the presence of earthly monarchs, 
with bowed head and before all the people, answered the 
soul-searching questions in terms that sealed him to the 
church on earth. 

As he received from tlie sanctified hands of his humble 
townsman that first communion of the broken and bleeding 
elements, I doubt not that he, far more than any else of 
them, recognized and realized that no principle of consti- 
tutional government he had ever argued, as counsellor or 
Congressman, was so vital as the question he then decided. 
No pageant he had ever witnessed as ambassador was so 
splendid as that simple ritual. No treaty he had ever 
negotiated was so far-reaching as that solemn compact 
with his Maker. No mandate he had ever issued as chief 
executive was so tremendous in its personal importance to 
him as the message he that day sent to the throne of the 
living God. 

For nearly three years he worshiped and communed in 
this church; and when the end came, he fell away into a 
gentle sleep, from which he barely woke to whisper the 



ON THE EVE OF THE REBELLION 41 

short Christian prayer, "0! Lord, God Almighty, as Thou 
wilt." He had lived as a patriot should live; and he died 
as a Christian statesman should die. 

"Altogether, it was a death-bed experience full of tran- 
quil light and peace, the calm evening sunset of a long life, 
which seemed to be itself but the brightening promise of a 
new and far better life beyond the grave." 

And so he "passed to where, beyond these voices, there 
is peace." 



} 



I 



